Michael Turton shows that the recall campaign in Taiwan is part of a long history of civil society resisting government misrule

"To understand how a campaign like this could organize itself with such effectiveness, it is important to situate public anger and public action in the centuries of resistance to external power that has deep, abiding roots in collective social action throughout the Qing, Japanese and KMT colonial periods."

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2025/07/14/2003840246

#Taiwan#democracy #activism #台灣大罷免

@davva23 @wandrecanada @mvilain @sjvn @pluralistic Closer to 1914, during #WW1: “Tobacco was valued as a #wartime necessity, a fact that the tobacco #industry seized upon in its #advertising that featured #soldiers, flags, and all the trappings of a triumphal nation making the world safe for #democracy. At home, tobacco funds were established to ‘send smokes to the boys’, eventually sending 16 billion cigarettes as part of relief by the war’s end.”
https://csts.ua.edu/wwi/introduction/

Golly, I wonder why France can bar a candidate from running for president after a court conviction, but the US couldn't do it. Some countries are more civilized and have a greater sense of decency than others, I guess. #Politics #Democracy #France #US #USA #USpol #MarineLePenhttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/31/marine-le-pen-barred-from-running-for-french-presidency-in-2027